Christian Dingus, 28, was with his partner when, he says, employees told the couple not to kiss inside, and the argument escalated outside.

A gay man accused a group of Washington, D.C., Shake Shack employees of beating him after he kissed his boyfriend inside the location while waiting for their order.

Christian Dingus, 28, was with his partner and a group of friends at a Dupont Circle location Saturday night when the incident occurred, he told NBC News. They had put in their order and were hanging around waiting for their food.

“And while we were back there — kind of briefly — we began to kiss,” Dingus said. “And at that point, a worker came out to us and said that, you know, you can’t be doing that here, can’t do that type of stuff here.”

The couple separated, Dingus said, but his partner got upset at the employee and insisted the men had done nothing wrong. Dingus’ partner was then allegedly escorted out of the restaurant, where a heated verbal argument occurred.

    • kryptonianCodeMonkey@lemmy.world
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      4 months ago

      Lol. Dude, I’m a full on socialist pro-choice pro-LGBT rights progressive. Feel free to check my post history. I couldnt give a fuck if two dudes are kissing. I’m not excusing the violence towards these guys. It’s not OK. There is a point, though, where macking on one another in public becomes a spectacle, gay, straight, pan or whatever. It is not homophobia for a business owner to ask you to cut it out if you are being excessive in front of other guests just because you are gay. I’ve seen straight couples make asses out of themselves in public too. It’s dumb. Asking that to stop in your restaurant is OK. What happened after is absolutely not. Is that clearer to you?

      • SphereofWreckening@ttrpg.network
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        And then one of the men, pretty forcefully, like, pushed me out of the way on my shoulder,” Dingus said. “And then, you know, next thing I know, that kind of just, I think, sparked the rest of them. … They all just kind of started attacking me at that point, dragging me back through the floor and continuously punching me in my head.”

        They essentially gang assaulted Mr. Dingus, and you believe it’s only because of some PDA? I highly doubt it, and believe fully that this is a case of homophobia. And almost certainly a hate crime too.

        • kryptonianCodeMonkey@lemmy.world
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          I assumed it happened because of the “heated verbal argument” he said his partner started. Words get exchange, tempers rise and fists come out. Again, I said I may be wrong. Maybe they were all homophobes that wanted to get a few licks in on some gay guys. Or maybe they were all assholes and turned a request into an argument into a fist fight. I don’t know. I just think his retelling of the story seems suggest there was more to it.

              • Samvega@lemmy.blahaj.zone
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                4 months ago

                I’m not.

                There’s no point lying, your posts are visible. You said:

                There is never a reason for either party to escalate a verbal disagreement to a physical one, but…

                You were talking in bad faith from the very first sentence. An absolute ‘never’ to modifying it into a conditional, based on you imagining that two gay people justified a Big Mad Moment because they kissed too hard.

                There is never a reason to beat up a couple as they wait for their fast food, no matter how hard they kiss. There is no but. That was a complete sentence. Them being gay doesn’t change that in the slightest.

                 

                Lol. Dude, I’m a full on socialist pro-choice pro-LGBT rights progressive.

                Usually better to show that than say it.

                • kryptonianCodeMonkey@lemmy.world
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                  Read my other reply to you regarding the misinterpretation of the word “but”. As for justifying the “big mad moment”, I said that calmly asking them to stop the PDA may have been justified. The employee did not get angry at them when asking them to stop by the own retelling of the victim here. I did not say that the anger and violence that followed were justified. I literally said the opposite. And you can think whatever of my progressivism. Living in a reality where sometimes people downplay their actions to come off better in a store is apparently antithetical to progressivism to you, but not to me. The guy still has rights, dignity and the freedom to express himself and love whomever he wants even if he was too embarrassed to admit he was sucking face a bit too intensely for a business to be happy with.

              • sneaky@r.nf
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                Welcome to Lemmy. I get where you’re coming from. I run a business and I have had to ask straight and gay couples to tone down their PDA. Sometimes they respond poorly and I have had them downplay what they were doing as if I wasn’t just watching it… Unfortunately letting that kind of thing slide negatively impacts how other customer view my business. I can’t have people groping each other when a family walks in.

                To the point of the people not comprehending the full scope of what you’re saying, obviously this situation got violent and that’s uncalled for. Straight or gay violence isn’t the answer.

          • SphereofWreckening@ttrpg.network
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            4 months ago

            Multiple employees beat up a gay man after he had some PDA with his partner. No matter how you look at it the optics are horrible. Short of Mr. Dingus having a weapon or shouting slurs or something like that: there’s no justification for the employees to beat and attack him.

            I feel like you’re jumping through several hoops to put the blame back on the person who was beaten by multiple people.

            • GBU_28@lemm.ee
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              Trying to understand codemonkey, I believe they agrees there’s no justification. What they mean is that once a verbal fight started, tempers could have flared, and violence was inevitable, but not acceptable.

              That said, I agree the optics are very bad, and more importantly, society should start from the default position of first assessing if a hate crime happened.

              First thing should be “were these folks targeted based on their orientation?”

              After that is thoroughly vetted, only then can it be considered “did a bunch of folks get heated in a shake shack after the customers were firmly but non discriminatorily told to knock it off?”

              Edit if a reader thinks I took a side other than “hate crime bad, determine hate crime FIRST” with this comment you really need to think again.

              • Malfeasant@lemm.ee
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                First thing should be “were these folks targeted based on their orientation?”

                Problem is, you can never make that determination, bigots will hide their bigotry (at least in a place where bigotry is not socially acceptable, which I think DC qualifies… Oklahoma for example would be different) so unless you have some other indication, or prior knowledge of the person involved, the outward appearance of (asking couple to tone it down because omg gay people) and (asking couple to tone it down because heavy PDA makes some people uncomfortable regardless of the sexes involved) is the same.

                • GBU_28@lemm.ee
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                  Asking anyone, of any orientation or partner, to tone down PDA in a private business property is not a hate crime.

                  Like, unless you say it specifically, you are addressing the PDA.

                  BAD: “quit being gay in here”

                  GOOD: “take the PDA outside, that’s not appropriate in here”

                  The law would care about every detail of the interaction, starting from the initial comments.

                  Scenario 1:

                  • human is told to quit the PDA
                  • they get in a verbal argument
                  • the human being loses the fight
                  • bonus, the employees wail on them extra.

                  Not a hate crime. (But crimes certainly happened)

                  Scenario 2:

                  • gay couple is told to quit “the gay stuff” (hypothetical hate speech)
                  • they get in a verbal argument
                  • the gay couple loses the fight
                  • bonus, the employees wail on them extra.

                  This seems like much more of a clear cut hate crime.

                  I mean like, a few human beings having a disagreement about humans stuff, which results in violence, is just normal crime.

                  The distinction is rooted in the origin of the dispute, and things said and intentions asking the way. It really matters to the courts.

                  To be clear though, I’m not trying to water down potential hate crimes. I stick to my original position that any crimes involving protected groups, must be cleared of known hate crime motivations first. But you can absolutely get in a fight with a gay person without any “hate crime” motivations.

            • kryptonianCodeMonkey@lemmy.world
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              I’ve said multiple times that the violence was not okay and there was no excuse for it. No matter how much pda happened. I have also said multiple times that they are absolutely not to blame for the violence assuming neither threw the first punch. I only suggested that he might have downplayed a single detail in his retelling about what caused the employee to talk to them in the first place.

                • kryptonianCodeMonkey@lemmy.world
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                  I really havent. Suggesting that the restaurant may have been justified I asking them to stop what they were doing is not excusing the violence even a little and it’s ridiculous for you to conflate the two things

              • Samvega@lemmy.blahaj.zone
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                've said multiple times that the violence was not okay and there was no excuse for it. No matter how much pda happened. I have also said multiple times that they are absolutely not to blame for the violence assuming neither threw the first punch.

                Good.

                I only suggested that he might have downplayed a single detail…

                You just can’t stop adding to absolute ‘never’ and ‘not’ with additional bullshit.

                Let’s go back to your first post, which started:

                There is never a reason for either party to escalate a verbal disagreement to a physical one, but I would be very shocked if the PDA were as innocent as they imply it…

                You said the victims weren’t ‘as innocent’. You’re victim blaming. You can’t cover that up by starting with ‘not okay’, ‘no excuse’, and ‘not to blame’. You consistently follow on with words that EXPLICITLY MEAN “BUT they are not innocent and have some blame”.

                You talk like a politician. I can imagine you being on TV saying: “I respect childless women, however, they should vote like their father says”.

                Stop equivocating. If the violence was wrong, it was wrong. That’s it.

              • jpreston2005@lemmy.world
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                You’re the kind of person that listens to a broken woman describe being the victim of domestic violence and ask “but what did you do to set him off?”

                The only thing evident about you and your line of thinking is resentment.

      • finley@lemm.ee
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        4 months ago

        you’re not excusing the violence towards this couple, but you’re sure going out of your way to excuse all of the bigotry and hate which led to it, even going so far as to assert that they’re liars overblowing the situation so you can claim the bigots/assaulters are blameless, or, at least , that this bigotry and hate was somehow reasonable.

        you can claim to be leftie or whatever, but your words here show how you really feel towards the LGBTQ+ community and about those who would discriminate against us.

        • kryptonianCodeMonkey@lemmy.world
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          Dude sometimes people exaggerate. No strike that. USUALLY people exaggerate. Especially to escape blame in their own story. They aren’t to blame for the violence. Period. Full stop. But that doesn’t mean that they weren’t to blame for drawing an employee out to ask them to stop what they were doing. I’m not even saying that they definitely are. I. Don’t. Know. I haven’t seen security footage or anything. But suggesting that they might have been a little more extra in their kissing than they suggested is not tantamount to hating LGBT people. My suggestion doesn’t even have a thing to do with them being gay. Believe it or not, there are times where people jump to the minority card to explain how others feel about them or act towards them when, sometimes, they have legitimate reasons to feel things about someone or act a certain way irrespective of their minority traits. Are we all antisemites for preferring Walz over Shapiro as VP or being against the Palaesrinian genocide? We were accused of it, so it must be true, right? Does suggesting that Jewish people might be wrong about me being an antisemitic also make me antisemitic? Because you’re suggesting I’m a homophobe for not taking this one guy’s belief that the entire restaurant was itching to beat gay people as gospel.

          • finley@lemm.ee
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            My suggestion doesn’t even have a thing to do with them being gay.

            but they are, and you’re still doing all these mental gymnastics to rationalize the bigotry and hate that was unleashed towards them.

            Dude sometimes people exaggerate.

            apparently, only LGBTQ+ people when being attacked and not, perhaps, the Shake Shack employees who assaulted them.

            your automatic victim-blaming and vehement defense of the bigotry, even making up stories to rationalize it, shows who and what you really are.

          • DragonTypeWyvern@midwest.social
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            This is a fight you don’t need to take a side in. It very well could be the employees didn’t decide, as a group, to put a man in the hospital for being gay but the best case scenario is still a beating fueled by tribalism as they decided to all put a guy in the hospital for yelling at their friend.

            • kryptonianCodeMonkey@lemmy.world
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              I wasn’t trying to take a side. I think the guy may have been underselling the amount of PDA he and his partner were doing and the they may have been justifiably asked to tone it down, but I’m still on their side. They didn’t deserve to be victims, to be attacked. Both of those things can be true at the same time. Reality is not always as clean as bad guys were all wrong and good guys were all right. They are still the good guys here even if they are embarrassed to say that they got carried away with themselves. That’s not a crime. I’ve been gross with a girl in public too. M

              • finley@lemm.ee
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                You claim not to try to take a side, but you have Repeatedly accused the victims of lying, without any evidence, and have used that as justification for what happened to them.

                The people here aren’t idiots, and we can see what you’re doing.

        • kryptonianCodeMonkey@lemmy.world
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          Act like it… by disregarding the fact that gay people are flawed just like the rest of us and sometimes exaggerate or play down details in their stories to come off better? Fine, sure. Gay people are magic. They can’t lie. Feel better?

              • Samvega@lemmy.blahaj.zone
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                Being a victim doesn’t make you automatically incapable of lying.

                Maybe two gay men kissing can be seen as extreme sexual content through the eyes of bigots, because – hear me out…

                BIGOTRY IS NOT LOGICAL
                AND NEVER HAS BEEN

                • kryptonianCodeMonkey@lemmy.world
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                  You could be right. Every step of the way I have suggested that my read on the guys words might be wrong, that they could all be bigots that were just waiting to be able to beat on some gays. I don’t know man. I even came to this article taking it at face value that an entire restaurant staff was a bunch of homophobes. It was reading the guys own account that made thar conclusion seem sketchier to me. That is why I brought it up. That doesn’t mean I’m right. And that doesn’t mean the violence was OK. It unequivocally was not. You all threw a fit because I questioned if a gay person may have slightly downplayed his PDA. But whatever, I’m tired of defending in this stupid backnand forth. Think what you want of me. Christ.

      • Samvega@lemmy.blahaj.zone
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        It’s not OK. There is a point, though,

        “It’s not okay. Except…”

         

        It’s not okay to spread the idea that strangers store their own sexual secretions in jars. Except, in your case…

        Imagine that I finished that sentence by giving spurious reasons as to why I think it’s okay to spread a made up idea like that. Would you say ‘fair enough’ in response? Is it fair that I make you an exception, without evidence?

        Is it fair that you make this gay couple an exception, without evidence?

        Your suppositions are gross.

        • kryptonianCodeMonkey@lemmy.world
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          Please put more words in my mouth. Blatantly misquote me and misconstrue my basic English to mean whatever you want it to mean. Strawman me, daddy!

          • Samvega@lemmy.blahaj.zone
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            That’s interesting. You get to claim that a gay person was lying about kissing their boyfriend, but when you feel that assumptions are being made about you, you flip out. Do you often find that you treat people in ways that you don’t accept for yourself to be treated?

             

            You said: “There is never a reason for either party to escalate a verbal disagreement to a physical one, but…”

            To me, that reads as, “It’s not OK. Except…”

            Maybe you should have phrased it differently, e.g.:

            There is never a reason for either party to escalate a verbal disagreement to a physical one.

            I think that, maybe, the kissing described was more heavy and sexual in nature than they described. This does not mean they deserved to be attacked.

            Actually, I’m going to edit my post, because me supposing they were kissing extra hard has no bearing on the violence done against them. I said the violence was wrong, so saying ‘but they might have been kissing offensively hard’ is stupid. It doesn’t matter. I said it didn’t matter, and then I said it like I did matter. I’m going to remove that part, because it’s stupid, and makes me look suspicious.

             

             

            I ask again:

            It’s not okay to spread the idea that strangers store their own sexual secretions in jars. Except, in your case…

            Imagine that I finished that sentence by giving spurious reasons as to why I think it’s okay to spread a made up idea like that. Would you say ‘fair enough’ in response? Is it fair that I make you an exception, without evidence?